Nvidia driver (best branch for ac)

Hi folks im currently running the 353.06 drivers and i am wondering if anyone using a later driver on win7 64 is getting better performance on AC?

 

Very good question. I also am quite cautious, and don´t want to test 15 different drivers.
Anyway, an answer wouldn´t be very helpful, as there are a lot of engine changes in 1.3.

 

I think you should upgrade. You can see my configuration is not powerful at all but with the latest 4-5 drivers that Nvidia proposed I get more of it.
IMO upgrade is OK.
My 5 cents.

I now see Nvidia released a new driver ... I'm with the previous. But I can upgrade A.C., update the driver and give some feedback.

 

An engineering idiom, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

 

Shouldn't it be better ... let some1 test it and if OK - do it.
It's called progress.

 

nVidia drivers and progress do not always walk hand in hand. I still remember people updating their nVidia drivers for it to turn the fans off and frying the cards. It is also which series of card you have as to getting any benefits. A 4/5 series will not see much improvement in comparison to say a 9 series. But hey, run a benchmark or two then update the driver, keep GPU-Z running to check temps and see if it improves your scores (I do not put much faith in benchies, but if it is all you have to work with then that's all you have). Remember all systems are different so what you see and what someone else sees can be radically different.

 

I've been updating recently and I run a driver from ~2 weeks ago. The one before gave me random FPS drops (they freaking halfed!) when drifting a car
Luckily, that hasn't happened ever since. About FPS I don't know because I use VSYNC and get steady 60 most of the time.

 

I had several problem with the last 5 driver, TDR crash was present since the 353.06 (first driver for the 980 Ti). The one i use now is the 355.98 (i think it's the last one), no TDR crash and got some improvement (maybe 1-5 fps) around some game like AC,DiRT and Witcher 3, the weird stutter and tearing when i play 1080p video and decoding from the video card are gone since the last driver.

You need to test them to see the one who fit your need, i see many ppl who have more luck with old driver than the new and don't forget to delete de driver with the DDU before testing another version http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html .

 

Thx for linking that uninstaller, will use it next time I install new driver.
But I'm sceptical here because:

1) NVIDIA driver install tool already does "clean install"...isn't that the same?
2) does that really make a difference?!? I know it's propagated ever since but I never saw any A/B comparisons.

 

No driver ever really cleans up the mess left from the previous version. You really should remove drivers in safe mode and then install the latest. But hey, most of the time you do not really see much difference from just a new driver install, it is only when you get problems that you have to get deep down and dirty with them.

 

Hi folks ive updated to 356.04 beta as they had good reviews on the guru3d forums . I first tested time trial then a 16 car race. the results are as follows:

time trial 353.06
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
31389, 313703, 88, 111, 100.060

time trial 356.04
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
28220, 282438, 86, 114, 99.916

16 car race 353.06
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
12209, 371375, 25, 38, 32.875

16 car race 356.04
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
13899, 392078, 28, 39, 35.450

Overall not a bad driver , i run AC maxed at 1440p on 2 x gtx970s in sli.
If anyone wants to put more benchmarks up for later drivers then it would help everyone out . Thanks

 

I'm a bit shocked that you get 35.45 AVG FPS in a 16 car race with SLI 970s. If you play with "only" high settings, shouldn't u be getting sky high frame rates?!?

 

i did a clean install when i upgraded from my GTX680 from the installer and when i started to have TDR crash some ppl told me about DDU. I tried it in safe mode and even after 4 install of beta/whql with clean install from the installer, DDU found some registery and dll file left from my last card. I don't know if this caused my issue because it was in reality the unstable driver itself, but if it's there and DDU think it"s useless. it's good to take 3 minute to boot in safe mode and wipe out the last trace.

For the installer, i think the big meaning of clean install is to reset the profile and setting in windows from the nvidia control panel, yes it clean alot of file but it seem some stay there.

 

I dont know my settings are maxed and i run 4x sparse grid supersampling too so the game looking lovely. If their are any other 970 sli owners with my setup are are getting sky high frame rates let me know please.

 

I agree LeDude, should be getting much better frame rates than that. Very strange, but then again SLi is not always what it is made out to be.

 

Today 7 Oct. NVIDIA just released a new driver class 358.50.

 

This is a pretty difficult question to answer since drivers can behave a lot different on different systems.

 

@Horus - Yes, nVidia are not the best example for reliability ... but not to upgrade your drivers ... ever ... is plain nonsense.
And I do agree that for my card ... drivers upgrade are a bit ... meh ...
But I find it hard to explain how my FPS raised with 10-20% when I installed 1 of the drivers form the nvidia assembly line. Nothing else changed.
So either it removed something that was hampering the card performance or they really worked.
So ... yeah. I'm just saying that it might be good idea to update from time to time.

As admins say ... Use the second to last update. Just to be safe.

 

OK I did some tests, for any1 that is interested.
355.98-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-international-whql
Imola, hotlap - around 100 fps.
Imola, 10 cars grid - around 30 fps at start - then 50-90.

Then I upgraded the game, same driver.
Same stats.

Then I upgraded the driver also.
358.50-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-international-whql
Imola, hotlap - around 110 fps.
Imola, 10 cars grid - around 30 fps at start - then 50-90.
A bit weird though - while watching the replay FPS dropped to 15 at the start, then back to around 50.

Overall ... so far ... good driver, the last 1.

Cheerzzz.

 

358.50 .. no issues, more than enough FPS (as long as it is 90+ i don`t really care)
tested: barcelona, alone: 200- 222
14 AI: 98 - 130
but I`m not runnig max settings .. just high/very high and 2x AA ..

funny thing is if you stay still on start, AI cars will stay behind you for 50 seconds, than disapear and reapear in pits ..